Doctor's Assistant

by Celine Conway

  “We’re awfully grateful for all you’ve done, Ben. I’m sure there’s hardly another doctor who’d have tackled it outside a hospital.”

  “You’re wrong. This kind of thing is being done in all the remote parts of Africa.”

  “Still, you might have had my father sent to Umtopo.”

  “Idiot,” he said briefly. “Don’t worry, you’ll get a bill.” His manner, reminiscent of the old relationship which had existed between them, encouraged her to ask, “Who makes them out now?”

  “Alix,” he replied. “She’s a competent woman.” He rinsed his hands in the bowl Bwazi had brought and looked across at the erect figure of the Captain who, without aid, stood nonchalantly smoking at the veranda rail. “You still won’t be able to drive for a while, you know.”

  The answer was accompanied by a philosophical shrug. “If I’d taught Laurette how to handle the bus I wouldn’t care. She has to tramp everywhere and in this heat it’s fatiguing’“

  “Pity. You must use the boy for errands.” To Laurette he said, “Can I take you somewhere this morning?”

  “I wouldn’t mind being dropped at the post office,” she confessed.

  His unbending was very slight. His remarks, as he drove, were merely conversational, and when he pulled up at the post office his smile of farewell carefully excluded friendliness. Laurette knew a moment of intense longing for a showdown with Ben. She wanted to ask him outright if it was true he had told his cousin he could not afford a nurse, and she wanted to accuse him of shabby treatment and cowardice. Anything to clear the air.

  But somehow she was out on the narrow pavement, thanking him politely for the lift and watching the tourer move off.

  Laurette bought her stamps and air letters. As always when she called at the post office she asked if there were any mail for the Delaneys, for everyone saved the Port Quentin postman a climb when they could. She received three letters, went out to the pavement and looked at them. Two of the envelopes were addressed to her father from England; the third, written in Peter’s unruly scrawl, was for Laurette. No doubt about it; he had spelled out her name in full so that there could not be a vestige of a mistake. He never wrote to her except for her birthday, when he remembered it, and at Christmas, and neither was imminent.

  The pavement was becoming congested with Pondos who had come in from the reserve to cash postal orders received from relatives working up north in the gold mines. There were blanketed women, each one with a baby attached to her back, adolescent boys with red clay on their faces, one or two under-sized men and a very old one, whose skin, like wrinkled leather, reminded Laurette of Ndibela, the ancient chief who lived at “Tumbling Waters”.

  She walked along the small main street with its one-storey shops on each side and a house here and there in between, and paused beneath the concrete portico which shaded the modest shopfront of the general store. Unwilling to postpone it longer, she tore open Peter’s letter and concentrated on what it conveyed.

  First she went hot, then cold, then clammy. Peter had a way with him; he could describe the intense heat, the pests, the ever-present dread of fever and so on, so vividly that one was wrenched with compassion for him. He, who had never really suffered either physically or mentally, was having a dreadful time in that filthy outpost near the West African coast, where most of one’s leisure was spent in drinking and gambling.

  But all this was a worked-up prelude to the second page of the letter. Peter was in debt; so were all the junior officials, he said, but they had private means or parents who indulgently paid up. He, Peter, was not so fortunate. In addition, he had had a row with one of his superiors and been forced to resign, which meant that he was now working out the three months’ notice.

  So you see how I’m placed, he finished. In two and a half months I leave this hell-spot, but before then I have to find about a hundred and forty pounds. My salary is already mortgaged and there’s simply no way of making such an amount here. I realize that since buying the house at the coast Father is short of cash, and in any case he’s the last person I’d approach—he’s kept himself short for years for my sake. You’re the sweet, thrifty type, Laurette, and I daresay you’ve been saving from your earnings during the past couple of years. I expect you know someone who could lend you a little, too. You’re my only hope, so try not to fail me. I’ll pay you back, of course—I’ve the prospect of a good post in England. If you can get the money have it transferred through the bank—it’s quicker and safer than the post. Mind now, not a word to Father! I’ll be writing him as usual in a few days.

  Laurette crunched up the letter and stuffed it into her bag. A hundred and forty pounds, her brain repeated; a hundred and forty pounds! A colossal sum, judged by the present state of the Delaney funds; she even doubted whether her father had as much to his credit just now, though he would have procured the money somehow. He could not tolerate debts.

  Laurette was angry with Peter, and frightened, too, but upon one point she agreed with him. John Delaney must not hear of the mess which Peter had made of his Nigerian contract. He had always loved his adopted son and guided him as best he could, but Peter, Laurette now admitted to herself, was a Delaney only in name. He was too easy-going, too careless of others’ feelings, too blandly certain that his own particular star was ever in the ascendant. His good looks and facile charm had landed him in scrapes before, but none of his previous troubles could compare with this present one. It was a nightmare.

  Laurette found herself leaving the main street and walking rather fast up the rough red hill towards home. Her heart was beating quickly and her hair clung to her temples with perspiration, but she was totally unconscious of physical distress.

  Did Peter really believe that she had saved anything like the sum he needed? Hadn’t it struck him that the money she had earned in England had had to cover the expense of travelling and clothes? And had he concluded that she contributed nothing to the housekeeping here in Port Quentin?

  She owned just thirty pounds, and the likelihood of adding to the amount scarcely existed, unless she left Port Quentin for a larger city. In any event, she could never collect a hundred pounds or more in a couple of months.

  Frantically, she reviewed her possessions, and after estimating their value she decided that nothing among them was worth selling, even if she could find a buyer. She thought for a bleak moment of Ben. If this had happened before the arrival of Alix Brooke, Laurette might have begged his advice. Now, that was denied her. She was starkly, heartbreakingly alone.

  The sight of her father leaning upon his stick in the garden steadied her. He must not be permitted to suspect anything. Every problem had its solution, and with patience and courage she would find the answer to this one.

  “We must get in the rest of the bananas,” her father said as she joined him, “and have them crated ready for the railway van tomorrow. The apricots will have to be thinned, too, or the branches will snap.” He smiled at her affectionately. “This is a special day.”

  So it was, for him. With activity partly restored to his leg he felt vitalized and strong. Laurette walked slowly at his side and, without his perceiving it, she looked at him closely. His reddish hair was ruffled by the breeze, his bronzed face, so dear and familiar, reflected serene satisfaction with everything around him.

  With studious casualness she asked, “How much are the bananas likely to fetch?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m hoping it will be enough to cover Ben’s bill.” He smiled and hastened to add, “By re-planning the plantation and perhaps adding a few more acres to it, we can get along without your salary. How would you like to be a small-scale planter?”

  “Very much,” she said.

  For a minute her heart leapt and plunged at the thought that here was the answer to one of her dilemmas. Then she recalled Charles’ remark at the waterfall: he’d been there with a woman before—with a woman who owned a plantation in Port Quentin and was good on a horse besides. With palpitating clari
ty she looked forward to when he would return for a short break to stay with his uncle, and to find Laurette. ... She pulled up sharply, half ashamed of the excited, wishful trend of her reflections.

  “How would you take more land?” she asked. “There’s none available adjoining us.”

  “If there were it would be too expensive,” he told her. “But the twenty-acre plots on the town boundary are cheap, and I daresay we’d be able to pay instalments. Most councils are accommodating to growers and they’d wait for payments till cheques began to come in.”

  Peter’s letter was suddenly like lead in her bag. Here was her father talking of spending money on land—money he did not at the moment possess—while the price of Peter’s honor stood at a hundred and forty pounds.

  Abruptly she pulled the mail from her dress pocket. “I picked up these for you. They’re both from England.”

  His smile faded a little. “Nothing from Peter yet?”

  She turned from him to snap a seed pod from a flower stalk, and carelessly shook her head. “There’ll be another mail in at the weekend. I expect you’ll hear then.”

  “If I don’t, I’ll cable. I’m particularly anxious that he should do well in this welfare job. A couple of years’ discipline in the tropics will steady him and prove his worth.”

  “Perhaps he’s not quite strong enough mentally to stand the tropics.”

  “I won’t believe that. Besides, he’s promised to make a go of it.”

  “There’s no sense in his staying there if he’s unhappy.”

  Her father stopped and eyed her shrewdly. “That’s odd, coming from you. You don’t spare yourself; why should you spare Peter?” Without waiting for her response he went on, “All right, my dear, I think I know. You believe Peter’s living proof that heredity does count; he had a philandering father and a frail mother. But it’s my opinion that upbringing is important too. One day”—with a challenging little wink—“you’ll have to agree that Peter has the strength of a Delaney.”

  Soon after this Laurette went into the house. She had recovered from the first shock of Peter’s news, but could not yet get round to thinking objectively about obtaining the cash he needed. She sat down in her room and wrote to him, setting out the impossibility of sending such a sum unless their father was brought into it. But in a panic that Peter might, in his desperation, divert his appeal to shady channels, she tore up the note and began again. The one she eventually posted informed Peter that acquisition of the money would be difficult and take some time, but she would do her best.

  Actually, she did nothing whatever about it for several days. All the cooler hours she spent in the orchard and banana groves, hacking off branches of bananas, picking the early fruit and supervising the packing and despatch. Though there were quite a number of the trim cases they did not represent much of a financial boost. Owing to the swift deterioration of fruit in the heat, none of the local growers dared send much of their produce farther than Umtopo or Kokstad, with the result that those towns were glutted and the fruit sold in the market for next to nothing. Bananas, picked green and railed from Umtopo, did reach other districts in good condition.

  Laurette worked as if driven, a large straw hat upon the yellow-brown curls and old navy slacks belted round her waist. In no time her shirts became faded and ripped, and her skin tone deepened to a fine brown-gold. She liked the outdoor work, liked it so much that a couple of hours daily at Markham’s typewriter were almost more than she could tolerate.

  On the lane which ran alongside the orchard she tried out the car, and found it easy to manage. There came an afternoon when she carefully drove her father ten miles into the hills, and they sat looking down upon the parched and shimmering mission.

  “Grand to be moving about again,” he said. “Do you like driving?”

  “It’s great—gives you a sense of power.”

  He smiled. “Why should you want anything so worldly?”

  “It helps you to tackle things which might otherwise appear too big.”

  “And what, exactly, do you mean by that?”

  What did she mean? Laurette was not too clear herself. Without specifically debating Peter’s request, she had come to the sane conclusion that the money he needed must be borrowed from someone she could trust to keep the whole episode to himself. Except for the fact that Mr. Kelsey would be militant against a man who battened on his sister, the old man was the obvious choice. The trouble was that he was capable of confronting her father with what he would term “the despicable conduct” of Peter. Mr. Kelsey could forgive wild oats—he had possibly sown a few himself in his youth—but his contempt for her brother might outweigh his consideration for Laurette’s feelings. However, there might be a way of borrowing the money without mentioning the use to which it would be put. She and Peter, between them, would eventually pay it back.

  Aware that her father was expecting a reply she said, with a touch of the old lightness, “I’m growing up, darling, and I reserve the sole right to my inmost thoughts. Do you mind?”

  “No, I’ve been expecting It,” he said dryly. “You’ve changed quite a bit lately.”

  “Have I?” She began the routine he had taught her for starting the car, and queried offhandedly, “Is it an alarming change?”

  “More interesting than alarming,” he said. Then in sudden anxiety: “Don’t reverse so fast! There may be no traffic but there are plenty of chasms.”

  A day or two later came Peter’s letter for John Delaney. It was a glib effort which nicely blended a few details about his job with good-humored grousing. Peter at his best, thought Laurette, a trifle grimly; her father’s reaction to it made her both pleased and uneasy. It appeared to harden his conviction that Peter had the right kind of backbone.

  That same afternoon Laurette walked over to the Kelsey residence. The garden boys talked desultorily on the front drive and the whole place had an uncongenial air of slackness. The master, she was told, had gone to Durban for a few days in the Barracuda. So Laurette, perforce, went back to the bungalow to finish the last pages of the typing.

  The book was checked, lovingly bound in a cover and posted to England. John Delaney set about some cartoons of which a bland musical piccanin was the central figure, and Laurette carried on with her work in the orchard and garden.

  In the hot, humid climate the sap was for ever rising. The restless weeds were uprooted but in the spaces they left other parasites appeared. There were vine growths smothered in mauve and pink flowers, rank little bushes full of thorns, masses of the short, flat-leaved plant beloved by monkeys, and tough-spiked aloe.

  A Pondo boy of twelve turned up and professed himself willing to work on the garden for “two shillun a day and some bread, missus”, but a couple of hours’ hoeing proved him incapable of garden labor. He just hadn’t the stamina.

  To a new resident in the district a Wild Coast summer can be a beautiful yet disheartening experience. The extravagant flowering and fruiting of sub-tropical plants and trees have to be lived through to be credited, the sea is a miraculous, murmuring blue scalloped with white and the night scents are varied and amazingly refreshing. But the damp heat is enervating and destructive, and the sun burns its devastating trajectory from dawn till dusk. There is no respite from savage and splendid nature.

  Often during those days Laurette wished it were possible to visit a cinema or even a street of good shops. Failing those, she would have enjoyed a week of leaden skies.

  They had been re-installed at the bungalow for nearly a month when her father heard from Mohpeng. Laurette came in to lunch a little late that day. She tossed her hat into the room and went straight to the bathroom to wash. She heard her father’s stick pound along the corridor, came out half-dry to remonstrate with him and found him brandishing a sheet of white paper.

  “Kelsey’s back. He brought this while you were down the garden. It’s from Charles.”

  “Charles!” Treacherous color came up under her tan. She hadn’t known the v
ery heaven there could be in speaking his name aloud. “What does he say?”

  “Not much. It’s simply an invitation to Mohpeng—for both of us.”

  Her color drained as precipitately as it had risen. “Am ... I included?”

  “It seems so. Listen. ‘I always sleep on the veranda at this time of the year so there are two vacant bedrooms. If Laurette would care to accompany you she will be welcome. Tell her to bring an evening frock. We have a dress occasion about once a week.’ ” Her father raised his head and his eyes were gleaming. “Satisfactory?”

  Laurette seemed to be sailing on a white cloud, sailing north over the rugged hills towards the majestic mountains of Basutoland. Soon, she would see Charles again. He would banter her, possibly even twit her about Ben, but she didn’t care. Charles was strong; she might even confide in him about Peter. Yes, of course. He had said she must contact him if she needed help. He would tell her what to do.

  A fear clutched at her heart. “I’m not good enough to drive all that way, and I doubt if the bus could do it, either.”

  “That’s taken care of. He’s sending a junior officer with his car. Mr. Kelsey will put the fellow up for the night and we’ll start off at dawn next morning. Travelling all day we should get there the same night. We don’t have to go to Maseru, as he did.”

  It sounded fantastic. The Delaneys in Basutoland, living once more under the same roof with Charles.

  “How long are we supposed to stay there?” she asked.

  “He doesn’t say. About two weeks, I should think.”

  “And ... when do we go?”

  “Next weekend. I have to telegraph him yes or no.”

  With all the composure she could summon Laurette persuaded her father to take his seat in the dining-room. She sat opposite him, looked down at the slice of cold meat and heap of salad with which he had served her and thought she would never want to eat again. Her father talked of the last few drawings he had completed for Charles, of the wonderful journey it would be through some of the most magnificently primitive country in southern Africa. Basutoland was a Protectorate and very English, an enclosed country which had neither railways nor good communications. Mohpeng nestled between mountains which were snow-covered for six months of the year.